Only seven of us showed up for this month’s Avids trip; after recent monster rallies this was a novelty, but a pleasant one after all, as fewer worries about losing anyone, and the companionship of old friends. The surprise involved an unusually good year for shorebirds, as well as a poor one for mosquitoes, and we were just getting in under the gun to some good spots soon to be dedicated to teal hunters.
After a little over two hours we dismounted at Pipe Creek WA, finding a dozen or more birders already there, along with hundreds of birds. The overall habitat was good, with dry and wet shores, and varying depths of shallow water attractive to all expected species. It was cool and sunny, and we spent an hour and a half studying shorebirds, along with the usual pleasant sideshow of waders, terns, swallows, and raptors. We were able to use the background of Cedar Point to locate birds: “There…in the shallows right in from of the second-highest loop of the roller coaster…” Eighteen shorebird species were the result, none of them new of course to our hardened vets, but we got life-list additions for a lot of other folks. Best birds were a single long-billed dowitcher, red knot, white-rumped and Baird’s sandpiper, and half a dozen red-necked phalaropes. We left when we saw a busload coming around the corner, maybe sixty participants in Kenn and Kim’s Shorebird Show. This is mainly designed for beginners, and does not get started till late in the morning, so even Columbus birders can sidestep it.
Our next leg took us to the new view of the Crane Creek estuary, which was pretty tame until we talked with a group of Amish guys–no gals of course–who told us that by walking maybe fifty yards into ONWR territory that morning they had seen some good birds, and so indeed when we did the same we added whimbrel, black-bellied plover, and buff-breasted sandpiper to our list. We took the quarter-mile beach walk back, seeing only a few non-birders strolling the wavewash.
Though the temp had soared over 90, we decided to chance walking out to the much larger then-invisible segment of the Creek by undertaking a short version of the fabled Death March, a shade-free trek of four miles that we shortened to two and a half. We found few mudflats, but a nice tern roost and some delights such as hundreds of eastern kingbirds assembling for their early long flight south.
Our last leg was to fill out the list by a visit to the Darby MP ponds back home, but a timely call from Brad informed us that while he’d had a healthy fifteen species there, we’d add nothing but sunburns to the list of our accomplishments for the day, so we scooted directly home after a good day afield, with 21 shorebird species seen. Our list of 72 species follows:
Canada goose
wood duck
gadwall
mallard
blue-winged teal
pied-billed grebe
double-crested cormorant
great blue heron
great egret
snowy egret
little blue heron
green heron
black-crowned night-heron
turkey vulture
bald eagle
red-shouldered hawk
red-tailed hawk
American kestrel
common gallinule
black-bellied plover
American golden-plover
semipalmated plover
killdeer
spotted sandpiper
solitary sandpiper
greater yellowlegs
lesser yellowlegs
whimbrel
red knot
semipalmated sandpiper
least sandpiper
white-rumped sandpiper
baird’s sandpiper
pectoral sandpiper
stilt sandpiper
buff-breasted sandpiper
short-billed dowitcher
long-billed dowitcher
wilson’s snipe
red-necked phalarope
Bonaparte’s gull
ring-billed gull
herring gull
Caspian tern
common tern
Forster’s tern
rock pigeon
mourning dove
chimney swift
belted kingfisher
red-bellied woodpecker
downy woodpecker
olive-sided flycatcher
eastern wood-pewee
willow flycatcher
eastern kingbird
warbling vireo
bluejay
American crow
horned lark
tree swallow
n. rough-winged swallow
barn swallow
black-capped chickadee
white-breasted nuthatch
eastern bluebird
American robin
European starling
cedar waxwing
yellow warbler
common yellowthroat
song sparrow